Cambridge, UK, 12th November 2009. Astex Therapeutics Limited
announced today that it has entered into a new collaboration
agreement with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to discover, develop and
commercialise novel compounds directed against multiple therapeutic
targets of interest to GSK.
Under the new collaboration Astex will apply its world-leading
fragment chemistry platform, Pyramid™, to multiple targets
identified by GSK, with the objective of identifying and developing
new candidate drugs. The targets have been selected from multiple
therapeutic areas within GSK.

Under the terms of the agreement, Astex and GSK will form joint
programme teams to identify candidate compounds. Astex will be
primarily responsible for the initial fragment screening and lead
discovery, and GSK will primarily be responsible for optimisation
of the identified lead compounds. GSK will be solely responsible
for completing pre-clinical and clinical development of all
products arising from the collaboration, and for their
commercialisation globally.

The agreement provides for an upfront payment and equity
investment in Astex of £20 million ($33 million), comprising
£12.5 million in cash and £7.5 million in equity. Astex
is eligible to receive development and regulatory milestones and
tiered royalties for each programme. Total payments under the
collaboration, excluding royalties, could reach over £300
million ($500 million), including non-clinical milestones totalling
more than £37 million ($61 million), if all programmes under
the alliance are successfully developed and commercialised.

Harren Jhoti, Chief Executive Officer of Astex Therapeutics,
said, “This is a major agreement for Astex, and we are
delighted to be working with GSK on this discovery alliance. This
partnership is another testament to Astex’s position as the
leader in fragment-based drug discovery, an approach that has
established itself as one of the most significant advances in
discovery chemistry in the past two decades”

Astex is a UK-based biotechnology company that discovers and
develops novel small molecule therapeutics. Using its pioneering
fragment-based drug discovery platform Pyramid™, Astex has
built a pipeline of five molecularly-targeted oncology drugs, of
which three are currently being tested in clinical trials and two
are in pre-clinical development.

In addition to its proprietary research programmes,
Astex’s productivity in lead discovery has been endorsed
through numerous partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies,
including AstraZeneca, Bayer-Schering, Boehringer Ingelheim,
Novartis and Johnson & Johnson.

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